Book picks similar to
The Story of Us by Tara Sivec


romance
military
contemporary-romance
second-chance

Fighting Redemption


Kate McCarthy - 2013
    He understands pain. He knows the hand of violence and the ache of loss. He knows what it means to fail those who need you. Being broken doesn’t stop him wanting the one thing he can’t have; Finlay Tanner. Her smile is sweet and her future bright. She’s the girl he grew up with, the girl he loves, the girl he protects from the world, and from himself.At nineteen, Ryan leaves to join the Australian Army. After years of training he becomes an elite SAS soldier and deploys to the Afghanistan war. His patrol undertakes the most dangerous missions a soldier can face. But no matter how far he runs, or how hard he fights, his need for Finlay won’t let go.Returning home after six years, one look is all it takes to know he can’t live without her. But sometimes love isn’t enough to heal what hurts. Sometimes people like him can’t be fixed, and sometimes people like Finlay deserve more than what’s left.This is a story about war and the cost of sacrifice. Where bonds are formed, and friendships found. Where those who are strong, fall hard. Where love is let go, heartache is born, and heroes are made. Where one man learns that the hardest fight of all, is the fight to save himself.

Unseen Messages


Pepper Winters - 2016
    From handwritten to verbal, seen and unseen. Messages exist all around us." But what if you don't see?What if you don't understand?What if, by ignoring the message, your life is never the same again?Estelle Evermore morphed from nobody to somebody overnight.Galloway Oak put his past behind him and endeavoured to make his fortune using his trade. Two strangers.One plane.Multiple unseen messages. From sky to island, they find neither fame nor skills can save them. Stripped from society and left alone to survive the elements, the very task of staying alive outweighs all other needs. Until survival turns to desire.And desire turns to danger.From New York Times Bestseller Pepper Winters comes a timeless love story answering the question of what happens when everything is stripped away.Standalone.

The Spark


Vi Keeland - 2021
    A deep, velvety voice answered, and as luck would have it, he had my suitcase, too.Donovan and I met at a coffee shop to do the exchange. Turned out, it wasn’t just his voice that was sexy. The man holding my luggage was absolutely gorgeous, and we had an immediate spark. He got me to admit that I’d snooped in his bag and then convinced me to make it up to him by letting him buy me coffee. Coffee led to dinner, dinner led to dessert, and dessert led to spending an entire weekend together. Donovan wasn’t just handsome with a panty-dropping voice. He was also funny, smart, and surprisingly down to earth for a man who wore seven-hundred-dollar shoes. Did I mention he also did my laundry while I slept?Definitely too good to be true.So what did I do to repay him for his kindness?I waited until he was in the shower, then ghosted him.My life was too complicated for such a great guy.In the months that passed, I thought about Donovan often. But New York City had eight million people, so what were the chances I’d run into him? Then again, what were the chances I’d run into him a year later…when I’d just started dating his boss?

Until Harry


L.A. Casey - 2016
    Hard because Harry, her beloved uncle, has died suddenly, but also because of him. Kale.Kale Hunt has been her best friend since childhood. But it was never that simple. He was Lane’s reason for leaving home and moving to New York. Seeing him with someone else, in love with someone else, shouldn’t have hurt. But it did. It really, really did. So she upped sticks and left, started a new life and cut herself off from her past.But now she’s back, and all the feelings are right there. As if she had never left.Emotions are running high for everyone, and tragedy has a funny way of bringing people together. But is Lane reading the signs right? Are they still just friends, or is there something more?

Tortured


Nicole Williams - 2017
    She didn’t realize how right she was. When Lance Corporal Brecken Connolly gets taken as a POW, Camryn hopes for the best but steels herself for the worst. In the end, steel was what she needed to survive when he didn’t. She moves on the only way she knows how—gilding herself in more steel. Years go by. She builds a new life. She leaves the old one behind.Until one day, she sees the face of a ghost on the news. Brecken seems to have risen from the dead, but she knows she can’t perform the same miracle for herself. While Brecken was held in a torture camp for the past five years, she’s been trapped in her own kind of prison. One she can't be saved from.The man she mourned comes back to join the living, but the girl he wanted to spend his life with isn’t the same woman he comes back for. Brecken isn’t the same person either. The past five years have changed them both. While he’s determined to put the pieces back together, she’s resolved to let hers rot where they shattered. Broken or not, Brecken wants her back. He’ll do anything to achieve that. Even if it means going against the warden of Camryn’s personal prison—her husband.

Heat Wave


Karina Halle - 2016
    ~~~ Still grieving the loss of her sister who died two years ago, the last thing Veronica "Ronnie" Locke needed was to lose her job at one of Chicago’s finest restaurants and have to move back in with her parents. So when a window of opportunity opens for her – running a kitchen at a small Hawaiian hotel – she’d be crazy not to take it. The only problem is, the man running the hotel drives her crazy:Logan Shephard.It doesn’t matter that he’s got dark brown eyes, a tall, muscular build that’s sculpted from daily surfing sessions, and a deep Australian accent that makes your toes curl.What does matter is that he’s a grump.Kind of an asshole, too.And gets under Ronnie’s skin like no one else. But the more time Ronnie spends on the island of Kauai, falling in love with the lush land and its carefree lifestyle, the closer she gets to Logan. And the closer she gets to Logan, the more she realizes she may have pegged him all wrong. Maybe it’s the hot, steamy jungles or the invigorating ocean air, but soon their relationship becomes utterly intoxicating. There’s just one major catch. The two of them together would incite a scandal neither Ronnie, nor her family, would ever recover from. Forbidden, Illicit, off-limits – sometimes the heat is worth surrendering to, even if you get burned.Note: this is a standalone novel, unrelated to any previous books. It does NOT contain cheating of any kind.

Fighting to Breathe


Aurora Rose Reynolds - 2015
    They never imagined the future could hold anything other than together-forever. When Lea's father dies in a tragic fishing accident, she's crushed under the weight of her grief and catches a glimpse of another type of future, one she knows she's not strong enough to face. Austin is angry. For the past fifteen years, he's believed the woman he loved with every ounce of his soul left him without so much as a backwards glance. When Lea unexpectedly returns to their hometown, all the years of heartache inside Austin bubbles to the surface and presents itself as blinding rage. Faced with the truth about the past, a newly discovered secret, these former lovers will learn that if they want to have any chance at the future they'd given up on all those years ago, they will have to rescue one another from drowning in pain so debilitating it will leave them both fighting to breathe. Contains mature themes.

The Birthday List


Devney Perry - 2018
    A journal with a list.Take a karate class. Go skydiving. Learn to play the ukulele. Say yes to everything for an entire day. The list goes on, line by line, of youthful dreams.For too long that list has haunted me. But starting today, I’m going to cross one item off. Today, I’m opening my new restaurant in Bozeman, Montana. The Maysen Jar.It should have marked the first day of a new life. A fresh start. But then Cole Goodman waltzed through the door and brought with him the past. A man who shattered my heart. A man I tried to forget.Maybe it’s a good thing he insists on sticking around. Because the only way I’ll finish the list is with Cole’s help. And then I can finally say goodbye.

In the Unlikely Event


L.J. Shen - 2019
    Shen comes a new, star-crossed lovers romance about loss, love, and meeting The One when you are too young to know how to keep them. Sometimes you meet people who are out of this world, so you make them a part of yours. A one-night stand born from vengeance in a foreign land. An explosive chemistry neither of us could deny. We signed a contract on the back of a Boar’s Head Pub napkin that said if we ever met again, we would drop everything and be together. Eight years and thousands of miles later, he’s here. In New York. And he’s America’s music obsession. The intangible Irish poet who brings record executives to their knees. The blizzard in my perfect, unshaken snow globe. Last time we spoke, he was a beggar with no intention of becoming a king. But a king he became, and now I’m his servant. I’m not the same broken princess Malachy Doherty put back together with his callused hands. I have a career I love. A boyfriend I adore. An apartment, a roommate, a life. I changed. He changed, too. But Mal kept the napkin. Question is, will I keep my word?

Blind Kiss


Renee Carlino - 2018
    Fourteen years ago, this shop was her childhood dance studio... Now she’s a suburban housewife, dreading the moment her son departs for MIT, leaving her with an impeccably decorated McMansion and a failing marriage. She had her chance at wild, stars-in-her-eyes happiness, but that was a lifetime ago. After The Kiss. Before The Decision.The Kiss was soulful. Magical. Earth-shattering, And it was all for a free gift card. Asked to participate in a psych study that posed the question, “Can you have sexual chemistry without knowing what the other person looks like?” Penny agreed to be blindfolded, make polite conversation with a total stranger, and kiss him. She never expected The Kiss to change her life forever and introduce her to Gavin: tattooed, gorgeous, and spontaneous enough to ask her out seconds after the blindfolds came off.For a year, they danced between friendship and romance—until Penny made The Decision that forced them to settle for friendship. Now, fourteen years later, both of their lives are about to radically change—and it’s his turn to decide what will become of their once-in-a-lifetime connection."

Worth the Wait


Claudia Connor - 2017
    When he finds out just how badly, it will break his too. Nick Walker found the love of his life when he was just nineteen.Found her.Loved her.Lost her.It's been ten years since Nick watched the only woman he ever loved walk out of his life. Now this FBI Special Agent will do anything to win her back.But it won’t be easy…Mia’s heart was shattered by Nick. They'll have to face their painful past if they want a future, including Mia's own secret about that day it all fell apart. Do you believe in second chances?

Kaleidoscope Hearts


Claire Contreras - 2015
    And all those feelings I’d turned into anger are brewing into something else, something that terrifies me. He broke my heart last time. This time he'll obliterate it.This is a standalone.

P.S. I Hate You


Winter Renshaw - 2018
     But you did notice. We spent one life-changing week together before you left, and we said goodbye on day eight, exchanging addresses at the last minute. I saved every letter you wrote me, your words quickly becoming my religion. But you went radio silent on me months ago, and then you had the audacity to walk into my diner yesterday and act like you’d never seen me in your life. To think … I almost loved you and your beautifully complicated soul. Almost. Whatever your reason is—I hope it’s a good one. Maritza the Waitress PS – I hate you, and this time … I mean it. AUTHOR’S NOTE: For a *limited time* the eBook version of P.S. I HATE YOU includes two bonus novels (ABSINTHE and DARK PROMISES). Rest assured P.S. I HATE YOU is still a full-length (~70k word) novel even though it might end around 33% on your device.

Heartbreak Warfare


Heather M. Orgeron - 2018
    What you didn't know was that I was breaking mine too.I thought they’d be enough–my husband and my son. That I’d get home and everything would go back to the way it was . . .Before the war. Before the ambush. Before you.But, no matter how hard I try, I can’t erase the trauma we shared. I can’t seem to forget the way my heart beat in time with yours. The truth is I’m lost without you.I thought the nightmare was over when they pulled us from that hole in the ground, but nothing could have prepared me for the war I’d face at home.I know it’s selfish of me to ask, but, please, I have to see you one last time. . .All my love, Scottie

Harley & Rose


Carmen Jenner - 2016
    So what if this isn’t her actual wedding day, and that she’s only here because Harley was left at the altar just a few hours earlier? Trading San Francisco for paradise and swapping her bridesmaid’s bouquet for a Blue Hawaii, Rose hopes she can finally escape the friend zone. Once upon a time they had been more than friends, but life got in the way. She’s spent every day since wishing Harley would get a clue. She’s always been his best friend. He’s always been hers. She’s in love with him. He’s … not in love with her. He’s … marrying someone else. He’s … hiding something. He’s … well—it’s complicated.